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Are Gas Clothes Dryers Worth the Extra Money?

As I mentioned last week, we recently spent over $4000 replacing many of our aging home appliances, including the clothes dryer.

People looking to save money on appliances quickly learn that gas dryers typically cost between $50 to $100 more than their electric counterparts, primarily because the components are more expensive; for folks on tight budgets, that price premium can be a deal breaker. That’s one reason only one of every five households in the United States use natural gas clothes dryers.

The thing is, when it comes to home appliance energy use, only the refrigerator consumes more electricity over the course of a year than an electric clothes dryer. Then factor in that, in most places, natural gas is currently significantly cheaper than electricity and it begs the question: Are gas dryers worth the extra money over the long run?

Although I suspected they would be, I wanted to run some numbers and find out for myself before we made a final commitment.

First, Some Basic Assumptions

To keep things as simple as possible, I made the following assumptions:

The heating elements for natural gas and electric dryers are on for the same amount of time

The amount of electricity required to turn the drum for either dryer type is identical

Gas and electric dryers take the same amount of time to dry an equivalent amount of clothes

All electrical and gas lines are already in place

There are no installation costs

The efficiency of gas and electric dryers are essentially equivalent

Maintenance costs are equal

Calculating My Energy Costs

Because the amount of electricity and natural gas my household uses widely varies from winter to summer, I decided to calculate my energy costs across an entire year in order to help offset the seasonal effects of tiered usage-rates.

With that in mind, I spent $561 last year for 540 therms of natural gas and the obligatory taxes; a therm is equivalent to 100,000 British Thermal Units (BTU). That averages out to $1.03926 per therm over the course of the year.

As for my electric bill, I was charged $1676 last year for 9533 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, no pun intended. That averages out to $0.17578 per kilowatt-hour, all taxes and surcharges included.

Calculating Dryer Costs per Load

After researching the various dryer models available to us, we ultimately settled on a Kenmore Elite Steam Dryer; including sales tax, the natural gas version was $86 more than the electric.

The gas version has a heating element rated at 22,000 BTU. Multiplying my natural gas cost by the rating gives the following result:

The electric version has a heating element rated at 5.4 kilowatts. Multiplying my electricity cost by the rating gives us:

(5.4 kW) x ($0.17578 per kWh) = $0.94921 per load

Based upon those numbers, it would cost me $0.72057 more per load if I chose to use an electric dryer.

Calculating the Break Even Point

Of course, I wanted to determine how long it would take to recover the $86 price premium commanded by the gas dryer. To do so I had to calculate the break-even point, which is calculated by dividing the gas dryer’s price premium by the cost difference per load. In my case:

($86) / ($0.72057 per load) = 119 loads

According to the Honeybee, she does about 25 loads per month. As a result, at current energy rates, it turns out that the extra money we’d pay for a gas dryer would be recovered in slightly less than five months.

Needless to say, for us it was a no-brainer — we paid extra for the gas dryer.

Some Final Tips

Your results will obviously vary depending on the number of loads you do each week, the price premium of the gas dryer, and the rates you pay for electricity and natural gas.

Also, keep this in mind: If you prefer the advantages of natural gas appliances, but your house isn’t plumbed for them, sticking with an electric dryer will probably be the best option because of the high cost of running a new gas line.

Finally, Consumer Reports offers the following tips to consider when looking for either a gas or electric dryer:

Use a moisture sensor. According to the California Energy Commission, they cut energy use by up to 15 percent.

Don’t focus on capacity. When if comes to everyday use, the differences aren’t significant.

Don’t pay for extra “bells and whistles.” Heat level, timed and auto-dry features, and a few fabric options are all you need.

Oh, and one final tip: A dirty lint screen will cause your dryer to expend 30 percent more energy — so keep it clean.

In Conclusion

In our case, it looks like we’ll be paying $69 this year drying clothes with our new gas dryer. If we had chosen the electric version, we’d be spending $284. Over a dryer’s expected 18-year lifetime, that’s a significant difference in operating costs.

Comments

We’re looking to buy a new washer and dryer soon and this overview was really helpful. We use an electric dryer now that is 12 years old but we also have a gas hookup, so we can go either way. After I dig up a years worth of utility bills I plan on running my own numbers but I bet they’ll confirm your findings that gas is the best bet. Its probably time to switch over.

I’ve always had a gas dryer. When I bought my first place, I was given a dryer that was gas, and I paid the gas company to come out and run a line as there wasn’t one there. When we moved, we bought a new one and didn’t even consider electric. I think they last a lot longer than electric dryers as well.

Len, I am with you on having as many natural gas powered appliances as possible. The cost difference of utilities makes it a slam dunk. Where as a stove or furnace is always fixed and not moving, the dryer sits usually next to a washer that shakes and shimmies a lot. Although a small chance of worry but have you any ways to protect the gas line connection staying firmly connected to the dryer in this case? A gas leak is rare, but, uh, a rather explosive possibility.

Anyway, here in California — earthquake country, of course — gas water heaters must be physically strapped to the walls by code. The same is not true for washers and dryers. However, they do make straps for them too:

Our current house is only set up for a gas dryer, which I considered a bonus at the time we purchased.

I’ll have to admit I didn’t do the math at the time, but I reasoned it this way: Business DO calculate the costs, and invariably laundromats use gas dryers. Therefore gas dryers must be more cost-effective.

All right… I guess I am the naive one (politely speaking) because I did not even know that gas dryers existed in this world. So it is all new to me. Don’t throw stones at me. I just learned something REALLY new.

You should read the reply from a reader in Thailand. Being afraid of asking questions or admitting not knowing something is apparently a national pastime.

Most houses in the US are wired for electric dryers, and once in position, there’s nothing to distinguish a gas dryer from an electric – they look the same. You may have seen one at a house and never knew the difference.

Reading through your post and comments, I think I have to consider a gas dryer next time. Though we do not use dryers very often as I have a clothes line in our backyard, which I use when the sun shines brightly and the wind blows well, we still need clothes dryer when it rains and during winter.

I have a gas dryer aged 13 yrs and have been researching new dryers. Lot of changes since my last purchase. I recently changed out a defective gas water heater for a Marathon electric water heater which has proven to be less costly to operate than the natural gas. Now it’s dryer time. We hang our clothes outside and in the winter in the basement where I added heat to the area by plumbing into the existing hot air duct pipe using an 8 ft 4″ sewage pipe with its drain holes enlarged to let more hot air escape and it has shortened the drying time of the laundry by half. Since we don’t use the dryer except for rainy days an electrical has become my choice because it is less expensive to buy, has fewer and cheaper components for DIYfrs if repair is needed and using google I found the only dryers ever recalled by manufacturers has been the gas models.

Although the raw dollars say natural gas is better, consider also the human and environmental cost of natural gas. Check out the “Gasland” documentaries to see what’s going on in the communities where natural gas is being extracted. Unfortunately the place I rent is wired for natural gas, so I use it too–I just don’t get the same “warm fuzzy” from it that I used to.

Ummm, you do know where electricity comes from right? Coal and Natural Gas is where the vast majority of electricity comes from. By using natural gas directly into your dryer you eliminate a stage of energy conversion. Directly converting natural gas into energy (heat) is cleaner and cheaper than using electricity from your 220v plug for the same thing. One less stage of energy conversion.

Oh and all you smug Electric Car owners…. your electricity is created by gas and coal so, as a matter of fact, you are not lessening gas and coal usage, you are merely adding another stage to your energy production. You add to the damage done, not lessen it. Natural Gas vehicles are an excellent, clean source of transportation, better than electric cars.

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